Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The U.S. presidential election will be held a week from today, and if the polls are correct, the outcome will be extraordinarily close. Many say that the country has never been as deeply divided. In discussing the debates last week, I noted how this year's campaign is far from the most bitter and vitriolic. It might therefore be useful also to consider that while the electorate at the moment appears evenly and deeply divided, unlike what many say, that does not reveal deep divisions in our society -- unless our society has always been deeply divided.

Since 1820, the last year an uncontested election was held, most presidential elections have been extremely close. Lyndon B. Johnson received the largest percentage of votes any president has ever had in 1964, taking 61.5 percent of the vote. Three other presidents broke the 60 percent mark: Warren G. Harding in 1920, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 and Richard Nixon in 1972.

Nine elections saw a candidate win between 55 and 60 percent of the vote: Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. Only Eisenhower broke 55 percent twice. Candidates who received less than 50 percent of the vote won 18 presidential elections. These included Lincoln in his first election, Woodrow Wilson in both elections, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Nixon in his first election and Bill Clinton in both his elections.

From 1824-2008, 13 elections ended in someone obtaining more than 55 percent but never more than 61 percent of the vote. Eighteen elections ended with the president receiving less than 50 percent of the vote. The remaining 16 elections ended with the winner receiving between 50-55 percent of the vote, in many cases barely above the 50 percent mark -- meaning almost half the country voted for someone else. The United States not only always has had deeply divided elections, but in many cases, minority presidents. Interestingly, of the four presidents who won more than 60 percent of the vote, three are not remembered favorably: Harding, Johnson and Nixon.

Three observations follow. First, for almost 200 years the electoral process has consistently produced a division in the country never greater than 60-40 and heavily tending toward a much narrower margin. Second, when third parties had a significant impact on the election, winners won five times with 45 percent of the vote or less. Third, in 26 of the U.S. presidential elections, the winner received less than 52 percent of the vote.

Even in the most one-sided elections, nearly 40 percent of voters voted against the winner. The most popular presidents still had 40 percent of votes cast against them. All other elections took place with more than 40 percent opposition. The consistency here is striking. Even in the most extreme cases of national crisis and a weak opponent, it was impossible to rise above just over 60 percent. The built-in opposition of 40 percent, regardless of circumstances or party, has therefore persisted for almost two centuries. But except in the case of the 1860 election, the deep division did not lead to a threat to the regime. On the contrary, the regime has flourished -- again, 1860 excepted -- in spite of these persistent divisions. The Politically Indifferent

Why then is the United States so deeply and persistently divided and why does this division rarely lead to unrest, let alone regime change? Let us consider this seeming paradox in light of another fact, namely, that a substantial portion of the electorate doesn't vote at all. This fact frequently is noted, usually as a sign of a decline in civic virtue. But let's consider it another way.

First, let's think of it mechanically. The United States is one of the few countries that has not made Election Day a national holiday or held its presidential elections on a weekend. That means that there is work and school on Election Day in the United States. In the face of the tasks of getting the kids off to school, getting to work, picking up the kids on the way home -- all while fighting traffic -- and then getting dinner on the table, the urgency of exercising the franchise pales. It should therefore be no surprise that older people are more likely to vote.

Low voter turnout could also indicate alienation from the system. But alienation sufficient to explain low voter turnout should have generated more unrest over two centuries. When genuine alienation was present, as in 1860, voter turnout rose and violence followed. Other than that, unrest hasn't followed presidential elections. To me, that so many people don't vote does not indicate widespread alienation as much as indifference: The outcome of the election is simply less important to many than picking up the kids from piano lessons.

It is equally plausible that low voter turnout indicates voter satisfaction with both candidates. Some have noted that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney sound less different than they portray themselves as being. Some voters might figure there is not much difference between the two and that they can therefore live with either in office.

Another explanation is that some voters feel indifferent to the president and politics in general. They don't abstain because they are alienated from the system but because they understand the system as being designed such that outcomes don't matter. The Founding Fathers' constitutional system leaves the president remarkably weak. In light of this, while politically attentive people might care who is elected, the politically indifferent might have a much shrewder evaluation of the nature of the presidency. The Role of Ideologues

The United States always has had ideologues who have viewed political parties as vehicles for expressing ideologies and reshaping the country. While the ideologies have changed since Federalists faced off against Democratic-Republicans, an ideological divide always has separated the two main parties. At the same time, the ranks of the true ideologues -- those who would prefer to lose elections to winning with a platform that ran counter to their principles -- were relatively sparse. The majority of any party was never as ideologically committed as the ideologues. A Whig might have thought of himself as a member of the Whig Party when he thought of himself in political terms at all, but most of the time he did not think of himself as political. Politics were marginal to his identity, and while he might tend to vote Whig, as one moved to less committed elements of the party, Whigs could easily switch sides.

The four elections in which presidents received 60 percent or more were all ideological and occurred at times of crisis: Johnson in 1964 defeated Barry Goldwater, a highly ideological candidate, in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination; Roosevelt defeated Alf Landon, an anti-Roosevelt ideologue, during the depths of the Depression; Nixon defeated George McGovern, an anti-war ideologue, during the era of the Vietnam War and the anti-war challenge; and Warren G. Harding won in the wake of World War I and the latter debacles of the Wilson administration and its ideology.

Crisis tends to create the most extreme expressions of hostility to a challenging ideology and creates the broadest coalition possible, 60 percent. Meanwhile, 40 percent remain in opposition to the majority under any circumstances. To put it somewhat differently -- and now we get to the most significant point -- about 40 percent of the voting public cannot be persuaded to shift from their party under any circumstances, while about 20 percent are either persuadable or represent an unrooted voter who shifts from election to election.

The 60-40 break occurs rarely, when the ideological bent rallies the core and the national crisis allows one party to attract a larger block than normal to halt the less popular ideology. But this is the extreme of American politics; the normal election is much narrower.

This is because the ideologues in the parties fail to draw in the center. The weaker party members remain in their party's orbit and the 20 percent undecided distribute themselves fairly randomly, depending on their degree of indifference, so that the final vote depends on no more than a few percentage points shifting one way or another.

This is not a sign of massive divisions. Whereas the 60-40 elections are the moments of deepest political tension in which one side draws the center to it almost unanimously, in other elections -- particularly the large number in which the winner receives less that 55 percent of the vote (meaning that a 5 percent shift would change the outcome) -- the election is an election of relative indifference.

This is certainly not how ideologues view the election. For them, it is a struggle between light and darkness. Nor is it how the media and commentators view it. For them, it is always an election full of meaning. In reality, most elections are little remembered and decide little. Seemingly apocalyptic struggles that produce narrow margins do not represent a deeply divided country. The electoral division doesn't translate into passion for most of the voters, but into relative indifference with the recognition that here is another election "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

The fact that nearly 50 percent of the public chooses not to vote is our tipoff about the public's view of elections. That segment of the public simply doesn't care much about the outcome. The politically committed regard these people as unenlightened fools. In reality, perhaps these people know that the election really isn't nearly as important as the ideologues, media and professional politicians think it is, so they stay home.

Others vote, of course, but hardly with the intensity of the ideologues. Things the ideologues find outrageously trivial can sway the less committed. Such voters think of politics in a very different way than the ideologues do. They think of it as something that doesn't define their lives or the republic. They think of politicians as fairly indistinguishable, and they are aware that the ideological passions will melt in the face of presidential responsibility. And while they care a bit more than those who stay home, they usually do not care all that much more.

The United States has elected presidents with the narrowest of margins and presidents who had far less than a majority. In many countries, this might reveal deep divisions leading to social unrest. It doesn't mean this in the United States because while the division can be measured, it isn't very deep and by most, it will hardly be remembered.

The polls say the election will be very close. If that is true, someone will be selected late at night after Ohio makes up its mind. The passionate on the losing side will charge fraud and election stealing. The rest of the country will get up the next day and go back to work just as they did four years ago, and the republic will go on.

Monday, October 29, 2012

RSIS presents the following commentary Pakistan 2012: Dicing With Its Own Future by Sajjad Ashraf. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward anycomments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, atRSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg

No. 201/2012 dated 29 October 2012

Pakistan 2012:Dicing With Its Own Future

By Sajjad Ashraf

Synopsis

Pakistan
is rent by regional resentment, ethnic-linguistic divisions and
provincial enmities, while stuck in a quagmire of criminality and
terrorism. It faces the prospect of another redrawing of its boundaries
unless it can resolve the internal conflicts and restore credible and
honest leadership.

Commentary

MORE
THAN 30 years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan is
still sucked in a quagmire. Its governance, never a strong point, has
broken down. Pakistan is now radicalised to a point where even the
Afghan President Hamid Karzai accuses it of exporting ‘terrorism”.
Pakistan’s economic progress is in serious jeopardy. Its social fabric
is torn seemingly beyond repair.

Located on historic invasion
routes to India, the lands that now constitute Pakistan have had their
fair share of border changes. In the process many kingdoms, sultanates
and states have been formed and disintegrated. The Pakistan created on
14 August 1947 broke apart in an acrimonious war in 1971 into Bangladesh
and West Pakistan. Now three territorial issues have the potential of
seriously altering its current boundaries, against the backdrop of
perceived discrimination – which became the basis of independence of
Pakistan and then Bangladesh. The country faces what a TV anchorperson
called “a 1971 moment”.

Balochistan resentmentBalochistan,
Pakistan’s largest province by area, constituting nearly 42 percent of
the country, and containing much of its natural resources, is into its
fifth military confrontation with the federation since its controversial
accession in 1948. Balochis have continued to resent the exploitation
of their resources with little compensation.

The current troubles
began in 2002, when the army moved in to set up cantonments in Kohlu
and Sui Districts. The callous killing of Oxford-educated Baloch leader
Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006 has led the Baloch nationalists and the
military into a war of attrition. Thousands of Baloch young men have
allegedly disappeared. Many tortured
and mutilated bodies have since been found.

In September this
year, the self-exiled former Chief Minister of Balochistan Sardar Akhtar
Mengal, in a surprise Supreme Court appearance, drawing parallels with
Bangladesh’s Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, presented his “six points” for
bringing peace to the province. But unlike Mujib’s, these “six points”
only demand establishment of rule of law in Balochistan. He said: “Why
should we not divorce peacefully…?” Seemingly ready for a negotiated
settlement to secure control of their governance and resources, none of
the self-exiled Baloch nationalist leaders have opposed the “six
points”.

The provincial chief minister admits he has no
authority. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Balochistan government
has constitutionally failed. The military’s statement supporting a
political solution to the Balochistan problem provided it is “within the
constitution” sounds hollow. The
rest of the political leadership and public opinion supports the
Baloch. A proposed energy pipeline, critical to economic growth of
Pakistan and Gwadar port’s success, is contingent upon peace in
Balochistan.

Splitting Sindh

Sindh, the only
province that voted a Muslim League majority government before partition
of India, has not forgiven the Punjab-led army for Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto’s killing. To destroy the Bhutto charisma, especially in urban
Sindh, General Zia ul Haq sponsored the Mohajir Qaumi Movement-MQM
(meaning refugees – the descendents of migrants from India) later
renamed Muttihida Qaumi Movement, arguably the first ethnic party in
Pakistan. Karachi-centered, the MQM, has been unable to garner any
support in other provinces while Sindhi nationalists resent MQM’s
control of Karachi.

The growing influx of Pashtuns into Karachi
since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and consequent MQM cadre
displacement from jobs and businesses makes it akin to Beirut of the
1970s and 80s. Comprising about 25 per cent of 20 million people in
Karachi and swelling, the Pashtuns now demand more political space. With
MQM unable to augment their numbers, every round of trouble is deadlier
than the previous one. The turf battles include target killings,
kidnappings for ransom and extortions. Criminal gangs run Karachi.
Disruption in Karachi’s economic life adversely impacts the whole
country.

President Asif Ali Zardari, to secure a governing
coalition, is taking the short-term route of placating the MQM, which is
widely believed to harbour plans to divide Sindh. The MQM demands and
gets what it wants every time it threatens to walk out of the coalition.
The recently-promulgated Sindh Local Government System, negotiated
secretly between the PPP and the MQM, virtually dividing Sindh between
urban and rural, will solidify MQM’s control of cities and
thus its access to huge funds. The Sindhi nationalists and other
coalition partners have quit the Sindh cabinet in protest and Sindh is
agitating violently.

The MQM and the Pashtuns are arming
themselves for a possible showdown. The MQM are in a hurry to secure
political advantage. The danger lies in matters going out of control
where the MQM takes the last stand with their backs to the sea. Unless a
political understanding is reached soon, it may well degenerate into
another ethno-nationalist armed conflict.

Punjab division

The
PPP, protesting discrimination against southern Punjab, has called for
the division of Punjab for ‘administrative’ reasons into a
Saraiki-speaking southern Punjab province and northern Punjab. The real
reason is PPP’s inability to break PML-N’s (Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz
of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif) stranglehold over Punjab. A call
for division of Punjab, that considers itself as
the glue holding the country together, necessarily provokes sharp
reaction.

The PML-N, mindful of the electoral cost of opposing
the idea, has demanded that Punjab be divided into three instead of two.
Attempting to draw political mileage, it called for the creation of
Hazara and FATA provinces out of the present Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK).
Hazara, a non-Pashto speaking area, agitates against renaming the
province KPK.

Punjab would not let its advantage of numbers and
economic weight be undermined through its division. It has pushed for
similar break-ups of other provinces so that Punjab’s relative strength
is maintained. Being the largest province, politics in Punjab affects
the other provinces, threatening a snowball effect of division.

Political
sparring has already begun for elections due early next year, leading
to hardening of positions, drawing similarities with the fissures
between East and West Pakistan prior
to the 1970 elections. The big issue is the reaction of the heavily
Punjab-based military. If trouble spills over to a point where a
military solution is sought at the expense of political accommodation, a
Bangladesh-type situation - the so-called “1971 moment” – may arise.

Only
a few things, like the cold-blooded attack on teenage girl Malala
Yousafzai, hate of America or cricket, unite Pakistanis. Pakistan needs
to shed its own ignorance, elect credible and honest leaders, establish
rule of law and look inwards to secure its future.Sajjad
Ashraf was Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Singapore 2004-2008. He is
now an adjunct professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy,
National University of Singapore and a visiting senior research fellow
at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. He wrote this article
specially for
RSIS Commentaries.

Jackie, This article that you
sent out has some pretty serious implications. I've gather up the
following links to articles for people that might want to understand more of
what an EMP attack would involve and how it would affect the population of the
area that was attacked. I'm thinking in terms of what this weapon would do
should it be aimed at some particular city, state, or even country.
What if our own government should decide to use this against us in this
country? I'm thinking in terms of how many weapons are paraded before us
to be used against other countries only to end up being used in this country.

I didn't want to copy and paste the articles as that would be a bit
lengthy for one email. The first two that I've listed have particularly
good information. I would encourage all to at least read the first one so
that they understand what an EMP attack would accomplish and how they could be
prepared should this event ever happen.Alice

Boeing Has Perfected A Missile That Wipes Out Electronics And
Leaves Everything Else Intact

BoeingWhile
the U.S. geared up for the second presidential debate last Tuesday, an
unoccupied building sat pulsing with computers, electronic surveillance,
and security systems in the Utah high desert.

The unoccupied site
was awaiting the test of a weapon the Pentagon requested four
years ago to the day on 16 October, 2008. The
Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (
CHAMP), led by Boeing's Phantom works, promised to change the face of
contemporary warfare, and its test was a complete success.

CHAMP
flew over the Utah
Test and Training Range last Tuesday, discharging a burst of High
Power Microwaves onto the test site and brought down the compound's entire
spectrum of electronic systems without producing any other damage at all.
Even the camera recording the test was shut down.

Coleman spoke from a Boeing video
(below) that shows the results of the test, inside the computer filled
building. Flying over the largest testing range in the country, CHAMPS
took out seven
different targets before self-destructing over empty
desert.

While James Dodd, VP of Advanced Boeing Aircraft says he
hopes to implement the CHAMP sooner rather than later, it's just one
weapon in a growing arsenal meant to take down increasingly sophisticated
foreign radar systems.

Passive
radar is being heavily marketed abroad as the system to use if a
country wants to identify U.S. stealth planes including the forthcoming
F-35. The passive system evaluates a wide spectrum of anomalies to track a
jet, but a burst from CHAMPS, or the new active electronically scanned
array (AESA) will render that threat useless.

Expect CHAMP or AESA
or another radar jamming device on any missions involving those terribly
expensive F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

CIA Wants More Drones to Do in N. Africa What It's Done in Pakistan

The Washington Post is reporting
that CIA officials are leaning on President Obama to green light the
expansion of the intelligence agency’s fleet of drones. The increasing
militarization of the CIA has accelerated its “decade-long
transformation into a paramilitary force” according to a government
official quoted in the Post article.
CIA Director and retired Gen. David Petraeus
(a member of the internationalist Council on Foreign Relations) claims
that a beefed up drone presence would help his agents keep up with the
“threats in North Africa,” a region the government insists is attracting
al-Qaeda militants fleeing from the constant barrage of Hellfire
missiles fired from drones patrolling the skies over Pakistan and Yemen.
It’s not like North Africa hasn’t seen its share of drone sorties. On July 24, the Washington Post published an article describing the congestion of the skies over Somalia caused by drone traffic. The situation is so bad, says the Post, that there is a “danger to air traffic” in the area.
An additional problem posed by the proliferation of the unmanned
aircraft above the east African nation is that their presence might be
evidence of a violation of a 1992 United Nations Security Council arms embargo still in effect.
The article in the Post cites a UN report in which officials
of the international body recount several instances where collisions
between drones and commercial aircraft or objects on the ground were
“narrowly averted.” One such incident involved a drone and a passenger
plane flying above Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia.
The authors of the report of the investigation did not directly
implicate the United States. That said, the report indicated that “at
least two of the unmanned aircraft appeared to be U.S.-manufactured and
suggested that Washington has been less than forthcoming about its drone
operations in Somalia.”
According to the report, there have been 64 unauthorized drone
deployments, fighter jet missions, or attack helicopter flights recorded
in Somalia since June 2011. At least 10 of the documented flights
involved drones.
While the U.S. military keeps mum about its use of drones around the
world, it is known that drones are deployed and launched from American
military bases in Djibouti, the Seychelles, and Ethiopia. In fact, in a
statement released in June, the Obama administration admitted that it
“is engaged in a robust range of operations to target Al-Qaeda and
associated forces, including in Somalia.” In 2011, the military
acknowledged that as part of that operation a drone strike was launched
against two suspected leaders of al-Shabaab, an alleged al-Qaeda
affiliate based in Somalia. Again, the use of these drones and the
firing of missiles at militants seemingly violates the 1992 embargo, as
drones carrying Hellfire missiles are inarguably deployed for uses that
are “exclusively military,” in direct contravention of the terms of the
embargo.
The story in the Post indicates that the Pentagon is not
bothered by accusations of breaking the embargo. To the contrary, the
article claims that the U.S. military intends to deploy additional
drones in the region, including the supplying of eight hand-launched
Raven drones to Kenyan forces stationed in Somalia as part of the
African Union mission.
While the overlords at the UN are aware and approve of the sale of
small low-flying drones to the African Union troops, the reports of
high-altitude large Predator and Reaper drones are not covered by any
exception to the embargo. While the U.S. military should take no orders
from the United Nations, it is curious that the global body will deign
to permit the United States to supply drones to the armed forces
operating under the blue UN flag, while forbidding their use by the
American military.
The documented increase in the use of drones in Somalia — many, if
not most, of which are believed to belong to the United States —
coincides with the missions being carried out in the area by Special
Operations units and their CIA cohorts. The Post reports that
these operatives “have gradually stepped up secret missions inside
Somalia to rescue hostages and hunt for al-Shabaab leaders.”
While the leaders of al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, and other suspected
militant groups will undoubtedly be the announced target of the expanded
CIA drone fleet (is there any doubt the request will be granted?),
figures reported by Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik and
research compiled by New York and Stanford Universities, cast serious
doubt on the success of these future sorties to eliminate the alleged
threat posed by these alleged terrorists.
Last week, reports Digital Journal, Malik said that up to 80 percent of those killed in Pakistan by U.S. drones were innocent civilians.
Further proof of the indiscriminate destruction caused by these drone attacks was provided by data published by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism.
According to this London-based advocacy group, there have been at least
350 U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004. Nearly 300 of these have
occurred after the inauguration of President Barack Obama. As many as
885 innocent civilians — including 176 children — have been needlessly,
summarily, and callously killed in drone strikes ordered by the White
House and the CIA.
And as we have reported, the NYU/Stanford report entitled Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan contains
tragic details of the myriad ways that President Obama’s death-by-drone
program is devastating the lives of ordinary Pakistanis who have no
connection to terror other than the fact that they are being constantly
terrorized by the government of the United States.
Information contained in that report indicate that only two percent
of drone strikes result in the death of known leaders of terrorist
organizations.
What has the United States’ drone war wrought? Peace? A reduction in
the number of suspected militants formulating plans to attack the United
States, its people, or its interests at home or overseas?
No.
Beyond the effect the winnowing of the president's kill list is
having on domestic politics in countries in the Middle East, there is a
larger threat to American security from blowback.
Blowback is defined as violent counter-attacks carried out as revenge for covert operations.
After a drone attack killed 13 Yemenis by “mistake”
in September, relatives of those killed in the strike spoke with the
clarity and carelessness that comes from the mixture of mourning with
rage.
"You want us to stay quiet while our wives and brothers are being
killed for no reason. This attack is the real terrorism," declared
Mansoor al-Maweri, whom CNN reports as being “near the scene of the strike.”
Then there was this from “an activist” who lives near the site of the
September massacre: "I would not be surprised if a hundred tribesmen
joined the lines of al Qaeda as a result of the latest drone mistake,"
said Nasr Abdullah. "This part of Yemen takes revenge very seriously."
Reuters explains that “Western diplomats in Sanaa say al Qaeda is a
threat to Yemen and the rest of the world.” An argument can be made that
a bigger threat to the world is the United States’ daily drone attacks
that destroy our own dedication to the rule of law and serve as an
effective recruiting tool for those seeking revenge for the killings.
The former CIA Pakistan station chief agrees. Speaking of the rapid expansion of the drone war in Yemen, Robert Grenier told the Guardian (U.K.):

That brings you to a place where young
men, who are typically armed, are in the same area and may hold these
militants in a certain form of high regard. If you strike them
indiscriminately you are running the risk of creating a terrific amount
of popular anger. They have tribes and clans and large families. Now all
of a sudden you have a big problem.... I am very concerned about the
creation of a larger terrorist safe haven in Yemen.

And:

We have gone a long way down the road of
creating a situation where we are creating more enemies than we are
removing from the battlefield. We are already there with regards to
Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Ultimately, the decision of whether to ship additional drones to the
CIA will be made by “a group led by President Obama’s counter­terrorism
adviser, John O. Brennan,” according to officials cited in the Washington Post article.
This group is reportedly the same powerful cabal that decides which
names get added to the president’s infamous “kill list” and how soon
those targets are erased from the list by way of a presidential order of
summary execution. No charges. No trial. No problem.

If you haven't had a chance to
read about it than you can revisit the article posted by CNBC HERE and an affiliate
of the Wall Street Journal known as 'Market Watch' HERE.

Apparently CNBC removed the article and nothing
is showing about this report that they published. But a smart Blogger called 'Sherrie
Questioning All' was smart enough to capture screen shots of the article
before it was removed. Take a look at the screen shots and article by Sherrie HERE.

Major Banks, Governmental Officials and Their Comrade Capitalists Targets of
Spire Law Group, LLP's Racketeering and Money Laundering Lawsuit Seeking Return
of $43 Trillion to the United States Treasury

NEW YORK, Oct. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Spire Law Group, LLP's
national home owners' lawsuit, pending in the venue where the "Banksters"
control their $43 trillion racketeering scheme (New York) - known as the largest
money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History and
identifying $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money by the
"Banksters" and their U.S. racketeering partners and joint venturers - now
pinpoints the identities of the key racketeering partners of the "Banksters"
located in the highest offices of government and acting for their own
self-interests.
In connection with the federal lawsuit now impending in the United States
District Court in Brooklyn, New York (Case No. 12-cv-04269-JBW-RML) - involving,
among other things, a request that the District Court enjoin all mortgage
foreclosures by the Banksters nationwide, unless and until the entire $43
trillion is repaid to a court-appointed receiver - Plaintiffs now establish the
location of the $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money in a
racketeering enterprise participated in by the following individuals (without
limitation): Attorney General Holder acting in his individual capacity,
Assistant Attorney General Tony West, the brother in law of Defendant California
Attorney General Kamala Harris (both acting in their individual capacities), Jon
Corzine (former New Jersey Governor), Robert Rubin (former Treasury Secretary
and Bankster), Timothy Geitner, Treasury Secretary (acting in his individual
capacity), Vikram Pandit (recently resigned and disgraced Chairman of the Board
of Citigroup), Valerie Jarrett (a Senior White House Advisor), Anita Dunn (a
former "communications director" for the Obama Administration), Robert Bauer
(husband of Anita Dunn and Chief Legal Counsel for the Obama Re-election
Campaign), as well as the "Banksters" themselves, and their affiliates and
conduits. The lawsuit alleges serial violations of the United States Patriot
Act, the Policy of Embargo Against Iran and Countries Hostile to the Foreign
Policy of the United States, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act (commonly known as the RICO statute) and other State and
Federal laws.
In the District Court lawsuit, Spire Law Group, LLP -- on behalf of home
owner across the Country and New York taxpayers, as well as under other taxpayer
recompense laws -- has expanded its mass tort action into federal court in
Brooklyn, New York, seeking to halt all foreclosures nationwide pending the
return of the $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000.00) by the "Banksters" and their
co-conspirators, seeking an audit of the Fed and audits of all the "bailout
programs" by an independent receiver such as Neil Barofsky, former Inspector
General of the TARP program who has stated that none of the TARP money and other
"bailout money" advanced from the Treasury has ever been repaid despite
protestations to the contrary by the Defendants as well as similar protestations
by President Obama and the Obama Administration both publicly on national
television and more privately to the United States Congress. Because the Obama
Administration has failed to pursue any of the "Banksters" criminally, and
indeed is actively borrowing monies for Mr. Obama's campaign from these same
"Banksters" to finance its political aspirations, the national group of
plaintiff home owners has been forced to now expand its lawsuit to include
racketeering, money laundering and intentional violations of the Iranian Nations
Sanctions and Embargo Act by the national banks included among the "Bankster"
Defendants.
The complaint - which has now been fully served on thousands of the
"Banksters and their Co-Conspirators" - makes it irrefutable that the epicenter
of this laundering and racketeering enterprise has been and continues to be Wall
Street and continues to involve the very "Banksters" located there who have
repeatedly asked in the past to be "bailed out" and to be "bailed out" in the
future.
The Havens for the money laundering schemes - and certain of the names and
places of these entities - are located in such venues as Switzerland, the Isle
of Man, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Cypress and entities controlled by governments
adverse to the interests of the United States Sanctions and Embargo Act against
Iran, and are also identified in both the United Nations and the U.S. Senate's
recent reports on international money laundering. Many of these entities have
already been personally served with summons and process of the complaint during
the last six months. It is now beyond dispute that, while the Obama
Administration was publicly encouraging loan modifications for home owners by
"Banksters", it was privately ratifying the formation of these shell companies
in violation of the United States Patriot Act, and State and Federal law. The
case further alleges that through these obscure foreign companies, Bank of
America, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo Bank, Citibank, Citigroup, One West Bank, and
numerous other federally chartered banks stole trillions of dollars of home
owners' and taxpayers' money during the last decade and then laundered it
through offshore companies.
This District Court Complaint - maintained by Spire Law Group, LLP -- is the
only lawsuit in the world listing as Defendants the Banksters, let alone serving
all of such Banksters with legal process and therefore forcing them to finally
answer the charges in court. Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission, nor
the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, nor the Office of the Attorney
General, nor any State Attorney General has sued the Banksters and thereby
legally chased them worldwide to recover-back the $43 trillion
($43,000,000,000,000.00) and other lawful damages, injunctive relief and other
legal remedies.
James N. Fiedler, Managing Partner of Spire Law Group, LLP, stated: "It is
hard for me to believe as a 47-year lawyer that our nation's guardians have been
unwilling to stop this theft. Spire Law Group, LLP stands for the elimination of
corruption and implementation of lawful strategies, and that is what we're doing
here. Spire Law Group, LLP's charter is to not allow such corruption to go
unanswered."
Comments were requested from the Attorney Generals' offices in NY, CA, NV, NH
, OH, MA and the White House, but no comment was provided.
About Spire Law Group
Spire Law Group, LLP is a national law firm whose motto is "the public should
be protected -- at all costs -- from corruption in whatever form it presents
itself." The Firm is comprised of lawyers nationally with more than 250-years of
experience in a span of matters ranging from representing large corporations and
wealthy individuals, to also representing the masses. The Firm is at the front
lines litigating against government officials, banks, defunct loan pools, and
now the very offshore entities where the corruption was enabled and perpetrated.
Contact: James N. Fiedler877-438-8766 http://spire-law.com
SOURCE Spire Law Group, LLP

In a Facebook
post, the HAARP monitoring website posted this startling
description above the photo of the readings:

Strongest readings in the history of this project have peaked. A never
before seen white-shade indicates that a value higher than 10 on the
1-10 scale has been indicated. It has no color assigned!
HaarpStatus has finally come to a bullseye over what looks like Rhode
Island and Connecticut.
Current projections at NOAA say Hurricane Sandy will hit New
Jersey. Our status numbers disagree. The storm is being steered toward
the higher concentration numbers.
Truly remarkable numbers and it is one to archive because this
may never be seen again in a very long time.

A post on theWeatherSpace.com also reported on the
readings from HAARP Status and confirmed that these readings have, until now,
been unheard of.

The article noted that while the National
Weather Service is claiming that the hurricane is set to hit New Jersey, HAARP
Status is predicting landfall in New England. (which is where the off the chart
HAARP patterns has been recorded.)

“I’ve never seen it that white before,” said
TheWeatherSpace.comSenior Meteorologist Kevin Martin.

“They indicate the white means higher than their values can
hold so whatever it is is a bad signals.”

Regardless of where the hurricane actually hits, these
readings seem to indicate that some sort of engineering of the
storm has taken place whether or not it was to push the storm into the country
or away from it remains up to the reader to decide.

Interestingly, this remarkable info comes as many in the
alternative media have speculated whether or not Sandy was being
engineered in order to somehow disrupt the elections.

In the broadcast above, the fact that this storm could very
well knock out power throughout the east coast, therefore
completely and totally disrupting the election as a way to somehow keep
Obama in power, is detailed meticulously.

This is a very important point when you consider that we
now apparently have off the chart HAARP readings throughout the east coast.

The obvious hope is that the storm will decrease in
strength as it moves closer to the United States and this may very well happen
but the fact remains that weather modification is a 100% real, declassified FACT and
ignoring its possibility would be outright insane.

Alex Thomas is the co founder and senior editor
of theintelhub.com, an independent journalist, researcher, and
all around truth seeker.

In a Facebook
post, the HAARP monitoring website posted this startling description above
the photo of the readings:

Strongest readings in the history of this project have peaked. A never
before seen white-shade indicates that a value higher than 10 on the
1-10 scale has been indicated. It has no color assigned!
HaarpStatus has finally come to a bullseye over what looks like Rhode
Island and Connecticut.
Current projections at NOAA say Hurricane Sandy will hit New Jersey. Our
status numbers disagree. The storm is being steered toward the higher
concentration numbers.
Truly remarkable numbers and it is one to archive because this may never be
seen again in a very long time.

A post on theWeatherSpace.com also reported on the
readings from HAARP Status and confirmed that these readings have, until now,
been unheard of.

The article noted that while
the National Weather Service is claiming that the hurricane is set to hit New
Jersey, HAARP Status is predicting landfall in New England. (which is where the
off the chart HAARP patterns has been recorded.)

“I’ve never seen it that white
before,” said TheWeatherSpace.com Senior Meteorologist Kevin Martin.

“They indicate the white means
higher than their values can hold so whatever it is is a bad signals.”

Regardless of where the
hurricane actually hits, these readings seem to indicate that some sort of
engineering of the storm has taken place whether or not it was to push the storm
into the country or away from it remains up to the reader to decide.

Interestingly, this remarkable
info comes as many in the alternative media have speculated whether or not Sandy
was being engineered in order to somehow disrupt the elections.

In the broadcast above, the
fact that this storm could very well knock out power throughout the east coast,
therefore completely and totally disrupting the election as a way to somehow
keep Obama in power, is detailed meticulously.

This is a very important
point when you consider that we now apparently have off the chart HAARP readings
throughout the east coast.

The obvious hope is that the
storm will decrease in strength as it moves closer to the United States and this
may very well happen but the fact remains that weather modification is a 100% real, declassified FACT and
ignoring its possibility would be outright insane.

Alex Thomas is the
co founder and senior editor of theintelhub.com, an independent journalist, researcher, and
all around truth seeker.

Holly Barker, a caring mother, has been sectioned on Friday 26
October 2012 by Oxfordshire and Welsh Child Services and Mental
Health Teams for trying to defend her daughter against abuse.
Holly was not properly admitted to hospital on arrival at 1830
Friday evening; she was not examined by a doctor on, or shortly
after admission, and was not assessed by a doctor until 0200 on
Saturday morning when she could not sleep. The doctor attending her
at that time had no idea why she had been admitted, did not appear
to have read her medical notes, and seemed unsure of her status in
the hospital. Despite this a nurse is now attempting to forcibly
prescribe anti psychotic drugs.
This action by Oxfordshire County Council, where members of the
Child Protection Team and the Psychiatric team are working in
collaboration, appears to be to silence Holly, whilst her
daughter, who has been placed in 'care', continues to be abused. It
is understood that at least one of the abusers is connected to
Oxfordshire County Council.
Holly is now in immediate danger of being forcibly prescribed
anti-psychotic drugs, and is being told that the need for these
drugs was prescribed during her admission examination - an
examination which never took place.
Prior to her sectioning Holly was rational and measured in her
actions, applying reason and common sense and working hard to
protect her daughter from further abuse; abuse facilitated and
condoned by Oxfordshire Child Services in collusion with others.
Holly is now in:
Wintle WardWarneford HospitalWarneford
LaneHeadingtonOxfordOX3 7JXContacts01865 741717
(switchboard)Wintle Ward 01865 738691
Can we ask that all concerned people call in a polite, reasonable
and measured way, to ask what is happening and why and to establish
her safety and well being. Holly has been sectioned to prevent her
defending her daughter. She was tricked by Oxfordshire Social
Services into allowing the sectioning team into her Oxford flat,
whilst she was alone and waiting for removal men. Oxfordshire SS
have colluded with Welsh SS in sectioning her for telling the
truth.
Concerned individuals may also wish to call the Emergency Child
Protection Team on 0800 833 408. Duty Officer for Saturday 27
October 2012 is Elaine Wade on 01235 521967
What is happening to Holly could happen to any caring Mother or
Father in UK unless the wider general public act to stop it. One
phone call from many can be the first step into stopping this
fascist detention and sectioning of caring innocent people. Please
help - politely and calmly.
----------
There will be no UK Column Live during the week of the 29th
October - 3rd November. Normal broadcasts will resume at midday on
the 5th November. In the meantime, please watch last Thursdays
interview with Ben Fellows to hear his allegations against Kenneth
Clarke here:

Dr. Steven Bayme, a scholar of
American Jewish society and politics at the AJ C, says US political discourse
owes a great deal to ‘the power of Jewish ideas’

Related Topics

This election season has seen an unceasing torrent of
speculation about the Jewish vote. As a supposedly swing constituency in many of
the largest swing states, Jews are a special focus for both sides in the US
presidential race.
Republicans in particular have invested millions of
dollars in attempting to lure Jews away from their traditional staunch support
for Democratic candidates.
But according to Dr. Steven Bayme, a renowned essayist
and expert on American Jewish society and politics and the national director of
the American Jewish Committee’s Contemporary Jewish Life Department, this
enormous interest in the Jewish vote is based on something deeper than electoral
math.
“Put aside the number of Jewish votes,” Bayme told the
Times of Israel in an interview on Thursday from his New York office.

‘I think the most interesting thing about this
week’s debate [was that] you had both candidates effectively vie for who is
more pro-Israel. Were they basing that vying only on the number of Jewish
votes? I think they were addressing a broader American fabric’

“The real question” underlying the two parties’
interest in Jews “is that so much of the political discourse in America – and I
think this is one of the great things about American Jewry, and it’s good that
Israelis understand this – owes so much to Jewish intellectual influence. Jewish
political influence in this country is not limited to the number of votes, but
includes the power of Jewish ideas, of Jewish thinking.”
Jewish ideas are prominent across the ideological
spectrum, Bayme adds.
“Jews are writing for publications. Jews are giving
speeches. Open up virtually any [political] magazine – Commentary, The New
Republic, The Weekly Standard – to say nothing of the major newspapers. In any
major news magazine — you’re going to find a large number of Jewish intellectual
contributors.
“If you can affect those people, if you can get at
Jewish thinking, you in turn will do very well for yourself” in national
politics.
That influence is an outgrowth of “one of the great
things about America: that in the open, free society of America Jews have made
their voices known, and no candidate of either party wants to be known as
somebody who is not a friend on Jewish issues.”
Political campaigns often speak of “opinion makers” as
a crucial audience, because they are able to transmit ideas and messages to
larger audiences, often with more authenticity and reach than the campaigns
themselves.
Jews make up a disproportionate part of America’s
opinion-making elite. So any effort to target Jewish opinion “will have a
multiplier effect through these intellectual contributors,” Bayme says.
“I don’t think that the Republican Jewish Coalition,
or for that matter the National Jewish Democratic Council, were simply an
attempt to appeal to the few million Jewish votes. Obviously that’s the stated
emphasis. But beyond that there’s the unstated emphasis that so much of the
political conversation in America is conducted by Jews.”
This social dynamic partly explains Israel’s own
strong position in American public discourse.

‘The only Jewish sub-populations Obama will have
problems with are the Orthodox and Jews from the former Soviet Union…but for
different reasons’

“I think the most interesting thing about this week’s
[third presidential] debate, [was that] you had both candidates effectively vie
for who is more pro-Israel. Were they basing that vying only on the number of
Jewish votes?”
He laughs at the question he poses and continues. “I
think they were addressing a broader American fabric” of Jewish intellectual
culture “which is deeply influenced by pro-Israel culture.”
As for Jewish voters’ actual votes, Bayme doubts there
will be a meaningful shift in this election from past elections.
“The standard rule of Jewish political behavior is
clear, and whether this is good or bad is up to other people to decide, because
we’re not a partisan organization. The standard rule is that Jews will vote for
the more liberal candidate so long as that candidate is not seen as hostile to
Israel. Since 1928, Jews have voted heavily for the Democratic candidate, from a
low of 60-65% for Mondale to a high of 90% for Roosevelt in the 1940s. That’s
been the reality since 1928, with the exception of 1980 when Carter ran. Carter
lost heavily [among Jews], but that shouldn’t be a surprise when you consider
his views on Israel.”
Obama, he adds, will continue to enjoy a large
majority of Jews.
“I don’t see any reason why that standard rule of
Jewish politics will be any different this year. As far as the Jewish vote,
Obama might slip a few percentage points from 2008, when he won about 77% of the
Jewish vote, but not by a significant amount. The only Jewish sub-populations
Obama will have problems with are the Orthodox and Jews from the former Soviet
Union. Both sub-populations vote more Republican, but for different
reasons.”
The Orthodox, though a minority of perhaps 12% of
American Jewry, will likely heavily favor Romney.
“That’s a pattern that’s been building for at least a
decade if not more,” Bayme notes. “That group has demonstrated time and again
that they are more likely to vote for a Republican candidate. That was true in
2008 and 2004.”
In 2008, for example, while Obama won some 77% of the
Jewish vote, “McCain captured 69% of the Orthodox vote. That’s quite a gap.
Orthodox Jews are far more likely to vote Republican.”
The only recent exception was the 2000 election
between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, “but then you had
[Democratic vice-presidential nominee Senator Joe] Lieberman running as a
‘favored son’ candidate.”

[SOL: It may be intellectual to say "US political discourse owes a
great deal to ‘the power of Jewish ideas’" as in the above essay, however
in today's economic environment there is also the realization that in the
majority of cases Jews are in control of much of the media with its
influence, and also the dollars in the U.S, from the Federal Reserve,
investment banks, Wall Street, multinational corporations and most of the upper
2% of the elitist billionaires. Jews are in all the unique positions to make
major contributions and are certainly needed to help finance the
exorbitant cost of today's political campaigns, especially in the battle for the
White House.]

In the week when President Obama and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney debated issues of foreign policy and the economy, we turn to world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and MIT professor, Noam Chomsky. In a recent speech, Chomsky examined topics largely ignored or glossed over during the campaign: China, the Arab Spring, global warming, nuclear proliferation, and the military threat posed by Israel and the U.S. versus Iran. He reflects on the Cuban missile crisis, which took place 50 years ago this week and is still referred to as "the most dangerous moment in human history." He delivered this talk last month at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst at an event sponsored by the Center for Popular Economics. Chomsky’s talk was entitled "Who Owns the World?" [includes rush transcript]

Rush Transcript

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.Donate >

Transcript

AMYGOODMAN: We’re on the road in Portland, Oregon. We are here as part of our 100-city Silenced Majority tour. On this week when President Obama and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney debated issues of foreign policy and the economy, we turn to world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky. In a recent speech, Professor Chomsky examined topics largely ignored or glossed over during the campaign, from China to the Arab Spring, to global warming and the nuclear threat posed by Israel versus Iran. He spoke last month at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst at any event sponsored by the Center for Popular Economics. His talk was entitled "Who Owns the World?"

NOAMCHOMSKY: When I was thinking about these remarks, I had two topics in mind, couldn’t decide between them—actually pretty obvious ones. One topic is, what are the most important issues that we face? The second topic is, what issues are not being treated seriously—or at all—in the quadrennial frenzy now underway called an election? But I realized that there’s no problem; it’s not a hard choice: they’re the same topic. And there are reasons for it, which are very significant in themselves. I’d like to return to that in a moment. But first a few words on the background, beginning with the announced title, "Who Owns the World?"

Actually, a good answer to this was given years ago by Adam Smith, someone we’re supposed to worship but not read. He was—a little subversive when you read him sometimes. He was referring to the most powerful country in the world in his day and, of course, the country that interested him, namely, England. And he pointed out that in England the principal architects of policy are those who own the country: the merchants and manufacturers in his day. And he said they make sure to design policy so that their own interests are most peculiarly attended to. Their interests are served by policy, however grievous the impact on others, including the people of England.

But he was an old-fashioned conservative with moral principles, so he added the victims of England, the victims of the—what he called the "savage injustice of the Europeans," particularly in India. Well, he had no illusions about the owners, so, to quote him again, "All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." It was true then; it’s true now.

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history. Britain could only aspire to be its junior partner as the British foreign office ruefully recognized. At that point, 1945, the United States had literally half the world’s wealth, incredible security, controlled the entire Western Hemisphere, both oceans, the opposite sides of both oceans. There’s nothing—there hasn’t ever been anything like that in history.

And planners understood it. Roosevelt’s planners were meeting right through the Second World War, designing the post-war world. They were quite sophisticated about it, and their plans were pretty much implemented. They wanted to make sure that the United States would control what they called a "grand area," which would include, routinely, the entire Western Hemisphere, the entire Far East, the former British Empire, which the U.S. would be taking over, and as much of Eurasia as possible—crucially, its commercial and industrial centers in Western Europe. And within this region, they said, the United States should hold unquestioned power with military and economic supremacy, while ensuring the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by states that might interfere with these global designs.

And those were pretty realistic plans at the time, given the enormous disparity of power. The U.S. had been by far the richest country in the world even before the Second World War, although it wasn’t—was not yet the major global actor. During the Second World War, the United States gained enormously. Industrial production almost quadrupled, got us out of depression. Meanwhile, industrial rivals were devastated or seriously weakened. So that was an unbelievable system of power.

Actually, the policies that were outlined then still hold. You can read them in government pronouncements. But the capacity to implement them has significantly declined. Actually there’s a major theme now in foreign policy discussion—you know, journals and so on. The theme is called "American decline." So, for example, in the most prestigious establishment international relations journal, Foreign Affairs, a couple of months ago, there was an issue which had on the front cover in big bold letters, "Is America Over?" question mark. That’s announcing the theme of the issue. And there is a standard corollary to this: power is shifting to the west, to China and India, the rising world powers, which are going to be the hegemonic states of the future.

Actually, I think the decline—the decline is quite real, but some serious qualifications are in order. First of all, the corollary is highly unlikely, at least in the foreseeable future. China and India are very poor countries. Just take a look at, say, the human development index of the United Nations: they’re way down there. China is around 90th. I think India is around 120th or so, last time I looked. And they have tremendous internal problems—demographic problems, extreme poverty, hopeless inequality, ecological problems. China is a great manufacturing center, but it’s actually mostly an assembly plant. So it assembles parts and components, high technology that comes from the surrounding industrial—more advanced industrial centers—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Europe—and it basically assembles them. So, if, say, you buy one of these i-things—you know, an iPad from China—that’s called an export from China, but the parts and components and technology come from outside. And the value added in China is minuscule. It’s been calculated. They’ll move up the technology ladder, but it’s a hard climb, India even harder. Well, so I think one should be skeptical about the corollary.

But there’s another qualification that’s more serious. The decline is real, but it’s not new. It’s been going on since 1945. In fact, it happened very quickly. In the late 1940s, there’s an event that’s known here as "the loss of China." China became independent. That’s a loss of a huge piece of the grand area of Asia. And it became a major issue in American domestic policy. Who’s responsible for the loss of China? A lot of recriminations and so on. Actually, the phrase is kind of interesting. Like, I can’t lose your computer, right? Because I don’t own it. I can lose my computer. Well, the phrase "loss of China" kind of presupposes a deeply held principle of kind of American elite consciousness: we own the world, and if some piece of it becomes independent, we’ve lost it. And that’s a terrible loss; we’ve got to do something about it. It’s never questioned, which is interesting in itself.

Well, right about the same time, around 1950, concerns developed about the loss of Southeast Asia. That’s what led the United States into the Indochina wars, the worst atrocities of the post-war period—partly lost, partly not. A very significant event in modern history was in 1965, when in Indonesia, which was the main concern—that’s the country of Southeast Asia with most of the wealth and resources—there was a military coup in Indonesia, Suharto coup. It led to an extraordinary massacre, what the New York Times called a "staggering mass slaughter." It killed hundreds of thousands of people, mostly landless peasants; destroyed the only mass political party; and opened the country up to Western exploitation. Euphoria in the West was so enormous that it couldn’t be contained. So, in the New York Times, describing the "staggering mass slaughter," it called it a "gleam of light in Asia." That was the column written by James Reston, the leading liberal thinker in the Times. And the same elsewhere—Europe, Australia. It was a fantastic event.

Years later, McGeorge Bundy, who was the national security adviser for Kennedy and Johnson, in retrospect, he pointed out that it probably would have been a good idea to end the Vietnam War at that point, to pull out. Contrary to a lot of illusions, the Vietnam War was fought primarily to ensure that an independent Vietnam would not develop successfully and become a model for other countries in the region. It would not—to borrow Henry Kissinger’s terminology speaking about Chile, we have to prevent what they called the—what he called the "virus" of independent development from spreading contagion elsewhere. That’s a critical part of American foreign policy since the Second World War—Britain, France, others to a lesser degree. And by 1965, that was over. Vietnam was—South Vietnam was virtually destroyed. Word spread to the rest of Indochina it wasn’t going to be a model for anyone, and the contagion was contained. There were—the Suharto regime made sure that Indonesia wouldn’t be infected. And pretty soon the U.S. had dictatorships in every country of the region—Marcos on the Philippines, a dictatorship in Thailand, Chun in South—Park in South Korea. It was no problem about the infection. So that would have been a good time to end the Vietnam War, he felt. Well, that’s Southeast Asia.

But the decline continues. In the last 10 years, there’s been a very important event: the loss of South America. For the first time in 500 years, the South—since the conquistadors, the South American countries have begun to move towards independence and a degree of integration. The typical structure of one of the South American countries was a tiny, very rich, Westernized elite, often white, or mostly white, and a huge mass of horrible poverty, countries separated from one another, oriented to—each oriented towards its—you know, either Europe or, more recently, the United States. Last 10 years, that’s been overcome, significantly—beginning to integrate, the prerequisite for independence, even beginning to face some of their horrendous internal problems. Now that’s the loss of South America. One sign is that the United States has been driven out of every single military base in South America. We’re trying to restore a few, but right now there are none.

AMYGOODMAN:MIT Professor Noam Chomsky. Coming up, he discusses global warming, nuclear war and the Arab Spring, in a minute.
[break]AMYGOODMAN: We’re on the road in Portland, Oregon, part of our 100-city tour. Today, though, we’re spending the hour with world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky. As Election Day comes closer, Chomsky examines topics largely ignored or glossed over during the presidential campaign, including the threat posed to U.S. power by the Arab Spring.

NOAMCHOMSKY: Well, moving on to just last year, the Arab Spring is another such threat. It threatens to take that big region out of the grand area. That’s a lot more significant than Southeast Asia or South America. You go back to the 1940s, the State Department recognized that the energy resources of the Middle East are what they called "one of the greatest material prizes in world history," a spectacular source of strategic power; if we can control Middle East energy, we can control the world.

Take a look at the U.S-British coup in Iran in 1953. Very important event. Its shadows cast over the world until today. Now that was—it was a pretense that it was a part of the Cold War; it had nothing to do with the Cold War. What it had to do with was the usual fear: independent nationalism. And it wasn’t even concerned with access to oil or profits. It was concerned with control, control of the oil resources of Iran and, in fact, of the region. And that’s a theme that runs right through policy decisions. It’s not discussed much, but it’s very important to have control, exactly as State Department pointed out—advisers pointed out in the ’40s. If you can control the oil, you can control most of the world. And that goes on.

So far, the threat of the Arab Spring has been pretty well contained. In the oil dictatorships, which are the most important ones for the West, every effort to join the Arab Spring has just been crushed by force. Saudi Arabia was so extreme that when there was an effort to go out into the streets, the security presence was so enormous that people were even afraid to go out. There’s a little discussion of what goes on in Bahrain, where it’s been crushed, but eastern Saudi Arabia was much worse. The emirates totally control. So that’s OK. We managed to ensure that the threat of democracy would be smashed in the most important places.

Egypt is an interesting case. It’s an important country, not an oil producer—it is a small one. But in Egypt, the United States followed a standard operating procedure. If any of you are going into the diplomatic service, you might as well learn it. There’s a standard procedure when one of your favorite dictators gets into trouble. First, you support him as long as possible. But if it becomes really impossible—say, the army turns against him—then you send him out to pasture and get the intellectual class to issue ringing declarations about your love of democracy, and then try to restore the old system as much as possible. There’s case after case of that—Somoza in Nicaragua, Duvalier in Haiti, Marcos in the Philippines, Chun in South Korea, Mobutu in the Congo, over and over. I mean, it takes genius not to see it. And it’s exactly what was done in Egypt and what France tried to do, not quite with as much success, in Tunisia.

Well, the future is uncertain, but the threat of democracy so far is contained. And it’s a real threat. I’ll return to that. It’s also to—important to recognize that the decline over the past 50 years is, to a significant extent, self-inflicted, particularly since the '70s. I'll go back to that, too. But first let me say a couple of things about the issues that are most important today and that are being ignored or not dealt seriously—dealt with seriously in the electoral campaigns, for good reasons. So let me start with the most important issues. Now there are two of these. They’re of overwhelming significance, because the fate of the species depends on them. One is environmental disaster, and the other is nuclear war.

I’m not going to take much time reviewing the threats of environmental disaster. Actually, they’re on the front pages almost daily. So, for example, last week the New York Times had a front-page story with the headline, "Ending Its Summer Melt, Arctic Sea Ice Sets a New Low That Leads to Warnings." The melting this summer was far faster than was predicted by the sophisticated computer models and the most recent United Nations report. It’s now predicted that the summer ice might be gone by 2020. It was assumed before that it may be 2050. They quoted scientists who said this is "a prime example of the built-in conservatism of [our] climate forecasts. As dire [the warnings are] about the long-term consequences of heat-trapping emissions ... many of [us] fear [that] they may still be underestimating the speed and severity of the impending changes." Actually, there’s a climate change study program at MIT, where I am. They’ve been warning about this for years, and repeatedly have been proven right.

The Times report discusses, briefly, the severe attack—the severe impact of all of this on the global climate, and it adds, "But governments have not responded to the change with any greater urgency about limiting greenhouse emissions. To the contrary, their main response has been to plan for exploitation of newly accessible minerals in the Arctic, including drilling for more oil." That is, to accelerate the catastrophe. It’s quite interesting. It demonstrates an extraordinary willingness to sacrifice the lives of our children and grandchildren for short-term gain, or perhaps an equally remarkable willingness to shut our eyes so as not to see impending peril—these things you sometimes find with young infants: something looks dangerous, close my eyes and won’t look at it.

Well, there is another possibility. I mean, maybe humans are somehow trying to fulfill a prediction of great American biologist who died recently, Ernst Mayr. He argued years ago that intelligence seems to be a lethal mutation. He—and he had some pretty good evidence. There’s a notion of biological success, which is how many of you are there around. You know, that’s biological success. And he pointed out that if you look at the tens of billions of species in human—in world history, the ones that are very successful are the ones that mutate very quickly, like bacteria, or the ones that have a fixed ecological niche, like beetles. They seem to make out fine. But as you move up the scale of what we call intelligence, success declines steadily. When you get up to mammals, it’s very low. There are very few of them around. I mean, there’s a lot of cows; it’s only because we domesticate them. When you get to humans, it’s the same. 'Til very recently, much too recent a time to show up in any evolutionary accounting, humans were very scattered. There were plenty of other hominids, but they disappeared, probably because humans exterminated them, but nobody knows for sure. Anyhow, maybe we're trying to show that humans just fit into the general pattern. We can exterminate ourselves, too, the rest of the world with us, and we’re hell bent on it right now.

Well, let’s turn to the elections. Both political parties demand that we make the problem worse. In 2008, both party platforms devoted some space to how the government should address climate change. Today, the—in the Republican platform, the issue has essentially disappeared. But the platform does demand that Congress take quick action to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. So let’s make sure to make it worse. And it also demands that we open the Alaska’s Arctic Refuge to drilling—I’m quoting now—in order to take "advantage of all of our American God-given resources." You can’t disobey God, after all. On environmental policy, the program says, "We must restore scientific integrity to our public research institutions and remove political incentives from publicly funded research." All that’s a code word for climate science: stop funding climate science. Romney himself says there’s no scientific consensus, so we should support more debate and investigation within the scientific community, but no action, except to act to make the problems worse.

Well, what about the Democrats? They concede that there’s a problem and advocate that we should work toward an agreement to set emissions limits in unison with other emerging powers. But that’s it. No action. And, in fact, as Obama has emphasized, we have to work hard to gain what he calls a hundred years of energy independence by exploiting domestic or Canadian resources by fracking or other elaborate technologies. Doesn’t ask what the world would look like in a hundred years. So, there are differences. The differences are basically about how enthusiastically the lemmings should march towards the cliff.

Let’s turn to the second major issue: nuclear war. That’s also on the front pages daily, but in a way that would seem outlandish to some independent observer viewing what’s going on on earth, and in fact does seem outlandish to a considerable majority of the countries of the world. Now, the current threat, not for the first time, is in the Middle East, focusing on Iran. The general picture in the West is very clear: it’s far too dangerous to allow Iran to reach what’s called "nuclear capability." That is, the capability enjoyed by many powers, dozens of them, to produce nuclear weapons if they decide to do so. As to whether they’ve decided, U.S. intelligence says it doesn’t know. The International Atomic Energy Agency just produced its most recent report a couple weeks ago, and it concludes—I’ll quote it: it cannot demonstrate "the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran." Now, that is, it can’t demonstrate something which cannot—a condition that can’t be satisfied. There’s no way to demonstrate the absence of the work—that’s convenient—therefore Iran must be denied the right to enrich uranium, that’s guaranteed to every power that signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Well, that’s the picture in the West. That’s not the picture in the rest of the world. As you know, I’m sure, there was just a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement—that’s large majority of the countries in the world and representing most of the world’s population—a meeting in Tehran. And once again, not for the first time, they issued a ringing declaration of support for Iran’s right to enrich uranium, right that every country has that signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pretty much the same is true in the Arab world. It’s interesting. I’ll return to that in a moment.

There is a basic reason for the concern. It was expressed succinctly by General Lee Butler. He’s the former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, which controls nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy. He wrote that "It is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East," one nation should arm itself with nuclear weapons, which may inspire other nations to do so. General Butler, however, was not referring to Iran; he was referring to Israel, the country that ranks highest in European polls as the most dangerous country in the world—right above Iran—and, not incidentally, in the Arab world, where the public regard the United States as the second most dangerous country, right after Israel. In the Arab world, Iran, though disliked, ranks far lower as a threat—among the populations, that is, not the dictatorships.

With regard to Iranian nuclear weapons, nobody wants them to have them, but in many polls, majorities, sometimes considerable majorities, have said that the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons, to balance those of their major threats. Now, there’s a lot of commentary in the Western media, in journals, about Arab attitudes towards Iran. And what you read, commonly, is that the Arabs want decisive action against Iran, which is true of the dictators. It’s not true of the populations. But who cares about the populations, what are called, disparagingly, the Arab street? We don’t care about them. Now that’s a reflection of the extremely deep contempt for democracy among Western elites—I mean, so deep that it can’t be perceived. You know, it’s just kind of like reflexive. The study of popular attitudes in the Arab world—and there is very extensive study by Western polling agencies—it reveals very quickly why the U.S. and its allies are so concerned about the threat of democracy and are doing what they can to prevent it. Just take—they certainly don’t want attitudes like those I just indicated to become policy, while of course issuing rousing statements about our passionate dedication to democracy. Those are relayed obediently by reporters and commentators.

Well, unlike Iran, Israel refuses to allow inspections at all, refuses to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has hundreds of nuclear weapons, has advanced delivery systems. Also, it has a long record of violence and repression. It has annexed and settled conquered territories illegally, in violation of Security Council orders, and many acts of aggression—five times against Lebanon alone, no credible pretext. In the New York Times yesterday, you can read that the Golan Heights are disputed territory, the Syrian Golan Heights. There is a U.N. Security Council resolution, 497, which is unanimous, declaring Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights illegal and demanding that it be rescinded. And in fact, it’s disputed only in Israel and in the New York Times, which in fact is reflecting actual U.S. policy, not formal U.S. policy.

Iran has a record of aggression. too. In the last several hundred years, it has invaded and conquered a couple of Arab islands. Now that was under the Shah, U.S.-imposed dictator with U.S. support. That’s actually the only case in several hundred years.

Meanwhile, the severe threats of attack continue—you’ve just been hearing them at the U.N.—from the United States, but particularly Israel. Now there is a reaction to this at the highest level in the United States. Leon Panetta, secretary of defense, he said that we don’t want to attack Iran, we hope that Israel won’t attack Iran, but Israel is a sovereign country, and they have to make their own decisions about what they’ll do. You might ask what the reaction would be if you reverse the cast of characters. And those of you who have antiquarian interests might remember that there’s a document called the United Nations Charter, the foundation of modern international law, which bars the threat or use of force in international affairs. Now, there are two rogue states—United States and Israel—for whom—which regard the Charter and international law as just a boring irrelevance, so, do what they like. And that’s accepted.

Well, these are not just words; there is an ongoing war, includes terrorism, assassination of nuclear scientists, includes economic war. U.S. threats—not international ones—U.S. threats have cut Iran out of the international financial system. Western military analysts identify what they call "weapons of finance" as acts of war that justify violent response—when they’re directed against us, that is. Cutting Iran out of global financial markets is different.

The United States is openly carrying out extensive cyber war against Iran. That’s praised. The Pentagon regards cyber war as an equivalent to an armed attack, which justifies military response, but that’s of course when it’s directed against us. The leading liberal figure in the State Department, Harold Koh—he’s the top State Department legal adviser—he says that cyber war is an act of war if it results in significant destruction—like the attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities. And such acts, he says, justify force in self-defense. But, of course, he means only attacks against the United States or its clients.

Well, Israel’s lethal armory, which is enormous, includes advanced submarines, recently provided by Germany. These are capable of carrying Israel’s nuclear-tipped missiles, and these are sure to be deployed in the Persian Gulf or nearby if Israel proceeds with its plans to bomb Iran or, more likely, I suspect, to try to set up conditions in which the United States will do so. And the United States, of course, has a vast array of nuclear weapons all over the world, but surrounding the region, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, including enough firepower in the Persian Gulf to destroy most of the world.

Another story that’s in the news right now is the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi reactor in Osirak, which is suggested as a model for Israeli bombing of Iran. It’s rarely mentioned, however, that the bombing of the Osirak reactor didn’t end Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program. It initiated it. There was no program before it. And the Osirak reactor was not capable of producing uranium for nuclear weapons. But, of course, after the bombings, Saddam immediately turned to developing a nuclear weapons program. And if Iran is bombed, it’s almost certain to proceed just as Saddam Hussein did after the Osirak bombing.

AMYGOODMAN:MIT professor and author, Noam Chomsky, continues in a moment. If you’d like a copy of today’s show, you can go to our website at democracynow.org. Professor Chomsky will next look at nuclear weapons race, as this week marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, often referred to as "the most dangerous moment in human history." Back in a moment.
[break]AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’re on a 100-city tour, today in Portland, Oregon. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our hour today with world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Noam Chomsky. His recent talk entitled "Who Owns the World?"

NOAMCHOMSKY: In a few weeks, we’ll be commemorating the 50th anniversary of "the most dangerous moment in human history." Now, those are the words of historian, Kennedy adviser, Arthur Schlesinger. He was referring, of course, to the October 1962 missile crisis, "the most dangerous moment in human history." Others agree. Now, at that time, Kennedy raised the nuclear alert to the second-highest level, just short of launching weapons. He authorized NATO aircraft, with Turkish or other pilots, to take off, fly to Moscow and drop bombs, setting off a likely nuclear conflagration.

At the peak of the missile crisis, Kennedy estimated the probability of nuclear war at perhaps 50 percent. It’s a war that would destroy the Northern Hemisphere, President Eisenhower had warned. And facing that risk, Kennedy refused to agree publicly to an offer by Kruschev to end the crisis by simultaneous withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba and U.S. missiles from Turkey. These were obsolete missiles. They were already being replaced by invulnerable Polaris submarines. But it was felt necessary to firmly establish the principle that Russia has no right to have any offensive weapons anywhere beyond the borders of the U.S.S.R., even to defend an ally against U.S. attack. That’s now recognized to be the prime reason for deploying missiles there, and actually a plausible one. Meanwhile, the United States must retain the right to have them all over the world, targeting Russia or China or any other enemy. In fact, in 1962, the United—we just recently learned, the United States had just secretly deployed nuclear missiles to Okinawa aimed at China. That was a moment of elevated regional tensions. All of that is very consistent with grand area conceptions, the ones I mentioned that were developed by Roosevelt’s planners.

Well, fortunately, in 1962, Kruschev backed down. But the world can’t be assured of such sanity forever. And particularly threatening, in my view, is that intellectual opinion, and even scholarship, hail Kennedy’s behavior as his finest hour. My own view is it’s one of the worst moments in history. Inability to face the truth about ourselves is all too common a feature of the intellectual culture, also personal life, has ominous implications.

Well, 10 years later, in 1973, during the Israel-Arab War, Henry Kissinger called a high-level nuclear alert. The purpose was to warn the Russians to keep hands off while he was—so we’ve recently learned—he was secretly informing Israel that they were authorized to violate the ceasefire that had been imposed jointly by the U.S. and Russia. When Reagan came into office a couple of years later, the United States launched operations probing Russian defenses, flying in to Russia to probe defenses, and simulating air and naval attacks, meanwhile placing Pershing missiles in Germany that had a five-minute flight time to Russian targets. They were providing what the CIA called a "super-sudden first strike" capability. The Russians, not surprisingly, were deeply concerned. Actually, that led to a major war scare in 1983. There have been hundreds of cases when human intervention aborted a first-strike launch just minutes before launch. Now, that’s after automated systems gave false alarms. We don’t have Russian records, but there’s no doubt that their systems are far more accident-prone. Actually, it’s a near miracle that nuclear war has been avoided so far.

Meanwhile, India and Pakistan have come close to nuclear war several times, and the crises that led to that, especially Kashmir, remain. Both India and Pakistan have refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, along with Israel, and both of them have received U.S. support for development of their nuclear weapons programs, actually, until today, in the case of India, which is now a U.S. ally.

War threats in the Middle East, which could become reality very soon, once again escalate the dangers. Well, fortunately, there’s a way out of this, a simple way. There’s a way to mitigate, maybe end, whatever threat Iran is alleged to pose. Very simple: move towards establishing a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. Now, the opportunity is coming again this December. There’s an international conference scheduled to deal with this proposal. It has overwhelming international support, including, incidentally, a majority of the population in Israel. That’s fortunately. Unfortunately, it’s blocked by the United States and Israel. A couple of days ago, Israel announced that it’s not going to participate, and it won’t consider the matter until there’s a general regional peace. Obama takes the same stand. He also insists that any agreement must exclude Israel and even must exclude calls for other nations—meaning the U.S.—to provide information about Israeli nuclear activities.

The United States and Israel can delay regional peace indefinitely. They’ve been doing that for 35 years on Israel-Palestine, virtual international isolation. It’s a long, important story that I don’t have time to go into here. So, therefore, there’s no hope for an easy way to end what the West regards as the most severe current crisis—no way unless there’s large-scale public pressure. But there can’t be large-scale public pressure unless people at least know about it. And the media have done a stellar job in averting that danger: nothing reported about the conference or about any of the background, no discussion, apart from specialist arms control journals where you can read about it. So, that blocks the easy way to end the worst existing crisis, unless people somehow find a way to break through this.

AMYGOODMAN:MIT Professor Noam Chomsky spoke on September 27th of this year at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. His talk was entitled "Who Owns the World?" If you’d like to get a copy of today’s broadcast, you can go to our website at democracynow.org. And I’ll be speaking along with Professor Chomsky and Juan Cole of the University of Michigan in Princeton, New Jersey, on November 11th at 1:30. You can go to our website at democracynow.org for details.Democracy Now! has an immediate opening for a Linux systems administrator. You can see democracynow.org for more information.
We continue our 100-city Silenced Majority Election 2012 tour today in Washington state. At noon, I’ll be at Olympia at the Longhouse at Evergreen State College. Tonight at 7:30 p.m., we’ll be in Seattle at Town Hall. On Saturday, we’re in Everett at Everett Community College at 1:30 p.m., and then in Spokane, Washington, at Spokane Falls Community College at 7:00 p.m. On Sunday, we’re in Bend, Oregon, at the Greenwood Playhouse at noon, and then in Ashland, Oregon, at the Mountain Avenue Theatre at 7:00 p.m. On Monday, we move to Salt Lake City at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 West Broadway, 7:00 p.m.; Tuesday in Peoria, Illinois, at Bradley University at the Michel Student Center Ballroom, 915 North Elmwood Avenue. On Halloween, Wednesday, we’ll be in St. Louis, Missouri, at Left Bank Books Downtown, 321 North 10th Street, at 7:00 p.m. On Thursday, November 1st, in Kansas City, Missouri, at IBEW Local 124,
301 East 103rd Terrace, followed by Houston on Friday, November 2nd, at the Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church, 1900 Bering Drive, at 7:00 p.m. On Monday, November 5th, on the eve of the election, we’ll be back in New York City at Barnes & Noble Tribeca, 97 Warren Street, at 6:00 p.m. Then, post-election, on Thursday, November 8th, in Chicago; Saturday at Green Fest in San Francisco. And you can go to our website at democracynow.org for details.

About Me

ROLAND SAN JUAN was a researcher, management consultant, inventor, a part time radio broadcaster and a publishing director. He died last November 25, 2008 after suffering a stroke. His staff will continue his unfinished work to inform the world of the untold truths. Please read Erick San Juan's articles at: ericksanjuan.blogspot.com This blog is dedicated to the late Max Soliven, a FILIPINO PATRIOT.
DISCLAIMER - We do not own or claim any rights to the articles presented in this blog. They are for information and reference only for whatever it's worth. They are copyrighted to their rightful owners.
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